The current catalogue includes a number of mid-price accounts of Harold in Italy—Beecham with Primrose (CBS), Bernstein with McInnes (EMI), Colin Davis with Menuhin and, in their Bernstein archives, Sony have one of the very best of all with William Lincer as soloist (10/69, omitted, it seems, from their Royal Edition). In any event this newcomer has no want of competition. Eugene Ormandy's 1965 performance with Joseph de Pasquale is new to this country, as for that matter are the excerpts from La Damnation de Faust which Munch recorded with the Philadelphia Orchestra two years earlier.
Ormandy is often underrated, yet at his best in, say, the Rachmaninov symphonies or such scores as Daphnis et Chloe or La mer he is surely second to none. This Harold is very impressive, shaped with sound musical judgement and great refinement of texture and although it may not quite match the pioneering Primrose/Koussevitzky recording (RCA, 5/46—nla) or the 1960s Bernstein account in high-voltage intensity and incandescence, it is musically most satisfying. I hope, incidentally, that RCA will soon restore the former to circulation.
At first Ormandy's slow movement struck me as a little touched by routine but it soon picks up. The orchestral playing is pretty marvellous throughout, though the ''Orgy of the brigands'' could do with a more demonic sense of abandon. Joseph de Pasquale is an admirably cultivated soloist and the recording balances him against the orchestra in truthful and realistic perspective. The reverberant acoustic of the Town Hall, Philadelphia, renders the orchestral texture just a little too opaque. Colin Davis and the EMI Bernstein have the benefit of more transparent orchestral detail. Munch's Faust excerpts are as good as any in the catalogue, superbly played and exhilarating in spirit; Barenboim is not quite in this class but despite one or two self-conscious touches his ''Royal Hunt and Storm'' with the Orchestre de Paris is still very good. Excellent value.'